The Year of Magical Thinking

I am sometimes very fortunate.

I have an amazing child, I have met Sharon Stone and now I have seen Vanessa Redgrave perform in a one woman play at the National Theatre.

The play is a monologue adapted from the book by Joan Didion and spans an 18 month period in the author's life in which she lost both her husband and her daughter.

I will say right now that I did not connect with the material, just as the woman at the end of my row who was coughing all the way through the performance had not connected with her doctor, or even a pharmacy brought cough suppressant.

However Redgrave grabbed me and didn't let me go for the entire 90 minutes. You may be asking how can you be pulled in by the actor and not the material. Redgrave could have been reciting the phone book and I would have been equally as entranced.

Even with a thick American accent, as we have seen her use before in Nip Tuck, her voice has that unmistakable quality that sits at the back of your throat and doesn't allow you to swallow. It is one of the most listenable voices god ever created. Calm. She has a calmness about her, and even while bestowing on us the most hysterical moments of Didion's material she still retained such incredible composure.

I liked the simplicity of the production, directed by David Hare, but it would be almost impossible to make chaos of a one woman dialogue - although I'm sure Joel Schmacher could pull it off given half the chance. The drop away cloths which symbolised the story moving forward were quite superb.

If I ever have a year of magical thinking I insist that Vanessa Redgrave delivers my monologue.
I was upset for the 'indian' woman in front of me who turned and looked at me every time I moved my foot. I do not believe that she brought into Redgrave's performance. I penalised her by moving my pink Adidas micropacer quite vigourously, and eventually it started kicking the back of her chair. I think Vanessa would have wanted it this way.